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Drama, explosive emotion and standing ovations: It was that kind of night in Canadian pairs figure skating.

Been a while, too, since such an intensely fought battle has been seen on the ice at nationals.

At the end, reigning champions Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford summoned up all their resources, fortitude and a sliver of higher difficulty quotient in their program to capture a second straight title.

But it took a record Canadian score to stay just beyond reach — a mere two points — of challengers Kristen Moore-Towers and Dylan Moscovitch, who arguably had the skate of their lives.

They’ll take silver on an evening when they might very well have been golden.

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Moore-Towers to Moscovitch as their Queen medley music concluded and they hugged each fiercely: “It doesn’t matter what happens, it doesn’t matter, we did it.”

The score, the outcome, that’s what didn’t matter, after all. They’d just skated their hearts out, for each other and for a sellout crowd at the Hershey Centre.

Moscovitch to Moore-Towers: “I’m proud of you. You’re the toughest girl I know.”

This was silver. This was, as well, for a berth on the Canadian team going to worlds in London, Ont., in March.

“I think every skater craves the feeling that we just had,” trilled an over-the-moon Moore-Towers. “You want to be thrilled. You want to feel tears . . . and fist-pumps. I feel like we maybe haven’t had that in a while, as much as we had it here.”

And they didn’t even win the darn thing.

In the corridor, Duhamel and Radford heard the roar of the crowd, rising to its feet for their Canadian rivals. Moore-Towers and Moscovitch were still in the kiss ’n’ cry awaiting their marks when the titleholders stepped on the ice. Duhamel admits she pretended the cheers were for her, absorbing that thunder to steel her nerves.

“That was the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do and so great for Canadian skating,” the feisty 27-year-old from Lively, Ont., told reporters afterwards, relief washing across her animated features. “We heard everything. You can’t ignore it. I was stroking around out there, the crowd was standing and I was, like, ‘They’re cheering for you, they’re encouraging you. Take that energy with you and use it to your advantage.’”

Instead, she and partner Radford, undoubtedly overwhelmed by the emotional potency of the moment, began their Angel free skate with an atypically limp triple twist, for which they ended up receiving a deduction.

“There was a split second of, ‘What was that?’” Radford acknowledged. “But it just brought us right back into our little bubble and every just happened on its own after that.”

They proceeded seamlessly through a difficult program that features a triple combination of side-by-side jumps: triple Salchow, double toe, double toe, which racked up 7.48 points towards their finally free score of 137.55, 206.63 overall. They’d come into final Saturday night nursing a one-point edge over last year’s fourth-place tandem but they needed to achieve a higher level now, highest ever. They did.

“Oh my God, that was the most amazing feeling I have ever had in my life,” Duhamel gasped afterwards. “It was like a million roller coasters that we just rode. It’s just indescribable.”

And a tad awkward too for Radford, who describes Moscovitch as his best friend. “It was challenging to be really happy for him in that moment. But I am, I’m really happy for him and for us. It was an incredible night of skating.”

Paige Lawrence and Rudi Swiegers took bronze with their War Horse routine.

For his part, Moscovitch insists he went to bed Friday night knowing in his gut he and his partner were fine-tuned for something extraordinary — especially after the disaster of Canadians a year ago, when a truly lousy free skate dropped them off the podium entirely. “We’ve been building all year, progressively getting better. We were ready to do that today for sure.”

Getting back to this point was a tough slog, if more a journey of impatience. “It wasn’t like we crashed and burned, we had one bad skate,” Moscovitch points out. “For us, it was more mentally staying there and then finding the motivation to keep improving.”

Everything came together here, at the optimum moment, feeding off the tremor of the crowd and a program that builds to an emotional climax.

“When it’s skated well, you kind of ride the wave,” said Moscovitch.

On any other night, it could have been good for gold.

“We would have loved to win,” said Moore-Towers, “and they definitely make it difficult for us. But, in a sense, it makes you proud that we have three strong (teams) on the podium. It was so close between us.

“It’s an ongoing battle between us and that’s good for Canada. It’s good for Canadian pairs.”

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